Mozilla scraps Windows Metro version of Firefox

Mozilla has announced it is scrapping Firefox for Windows Metro
before its release, due to lack of interest in the Windows 8
platform. Despite working on the software since 2012, Mozilla has
said it will now focus its efforts elsewhere.

In a blog
post published last week, vice president of Firefox Johnathan
Nightingale wrote that while the team working on Firefox 1.0 for
Metro was "solid", releasing the software "would be a mistake".

In the post Nightingale goes on to say that when Mozilla
initially started working on the project, Metro looked like it
would be the "next battleground web", but in reality the adoption
of Metro has been "pretty flat". Metro, which has actually now been
renamed "Modern UI", is the typography-based design language used
by Microsoft in several products, including Xbox, Outlook, Windows
Phone and Windows 8. In the context of Windows 8, Metro has been
poorly received by users and critics, and uptake has indeed been
poor.

It's an admission by Mozilla that the company backed the wrong
horse although, as Nightingale explains it, "Windows is a massive
ecosystem and Microsoft pushes its new platforms hard." It might
seem strange to back out at this stage given that the product was
so close to release, but it's actually a wise call given the amount
of future work Firefox for Metro would demand.

When testing new versions of Firefox, Mozilla regularly sees
millions of people simultaneously taking part in beta testing of
new browser versions, but when testing the Metro version, the
company has noticed that there have never been more than 1,000
active users a day. If Firefox for Windows Metro was shipped, it
would be buggy and would require significant follow-up work from
engineers due to lack of beta testing.

"To ship it without doing that follow-up work is not an option.
If we release a product, we maintain it through end of life. When I
talk about the need to pick our battles, this feels like a bad one
to pick: significant investment and low impact," says
Nightingale.

He adds that pulling the product is still a risk, as Metro still
could take off. If it does, he says, Mozilla will have fallen
behind, but the work the team has already put into the code "will
live on". For now though, Mozilla will focus its efforts in places
where it "can reach more people".